Best Handmade Gifts

People generally shy away from handmade gifts as they think they’ll look ‘cheap’ but here are a few ideas that are easy enough ideas and won’t hurt your bank account as well as making you look like you should open your own Etsy shop.

Food Gifts

One way to your loved one’s heart would be through their stomach and I’ve never met a person that’s turned their nose up at a food gift yet so here are a few that you can try yourself.

Cupcake/Muffin basket

One of the simplest baked good is the cupcake or muffin. You can tailor this simple recipe to personalise your basket, and by putting them into a nice little wicker basket and personalising the gift tag, you’ll be on to a winner with this classic.

110 g butter, softened

110 g caster sugar

110 g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

2 medium eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Creaming all of the ingredients together and putting them into a muffin tin, baking for around 18 minutes on 180°C – you have your basic version of your gift that you can personalise.

Preservatives

A good accompaniment to the cupcake basket would be a couple of jars of homemade jam. These not only look traditional and aesthetically pleasing but they’re simple enough and cheap to make and taste amazing on toast. Chutney is also a great one for the foodie in your life.

Baking Mix Jar

Now if you don’t want to do any of the cooking but still want a food gift that looks as good as it would taste if you bothered to make it, you can always transfer the dried ingredients for a cake mix of your choice (or the cupcakes above) into a nice mason jar, decorated with a gift tag. The layers of flour, cocoa powder, cinnamon or sugar in your mix make it look cool as well as being useful for the person you’re gifting it to.

Beauty

Beauty gifts again, are simple and show that a bit of effort has gone into the present that you’re giving along with helping the recipient pamper themselves.

Sugar Scrubs

Everyone wishes for soft and supple skin and the best way to do that is to exfoliate. Recipes for these scrubs can be as simple as using granulated sugar, coconut or almond oil and flavoured oil drops but they can also be changed to suit whatever you would like, you could include food colourings and layer the jar up to look better.

Face Masks

Face masks, like sugar scrubs, don’t need to include too many ingredients, as long as you’re giving the gift soon after making it, most face masks will keep and will be fresh if kept in an airtight container. Again, coconut oil is generally used to help moisturise skin, but oatmeal, honey and yoghurt can be used to make a mask that will help soothe and smooth skin.

Handmade Soap

If you really have the time and the resources (glycerin cubes and rubbing alcohol isn’t something you can get in the corner shop) then handmade soap can be the one gift that people know for a fact you have dedicated time and effort to. Again with this you can use a variety of different things to ‘flavour’ your soap so that it’s unique to you and one of a kind for the person you are gifting it to.